Using bad manners to get good manners

I have a pet hate (yes, another one). I understand it is polite to greet people when you see them. When I get to work I tend to politely call "Hi" to anyone I walk past or sit near to. And then I move on irrespective of whether my greeting gets a verbal response or a polite nod or smile. The interaction takes 5 seconds and all parties involved can move on with their lives. I may even be prone to nod or say Hi to anyone walking past my desk in the morning if our eyes meet. 

But some colleagues! some people! They have to have a verbal response from me when they greet me. They actually stand where they gave their greeting and wait for me to move my lips and vocal chords and say at full volume "Hello, How are you, It is good to see you today, have a good day". It is of no matter if I am currently on the phone or eating food or writing a proposal for World Peace or currently in a business related conversation. The Greeting Must Occur!! Worse, they actually raise their voice and issue a second greeting in impatience, usually starting with "Heellloo-ooh" or "I said Hello".

And the dirty looks! The look of rage that I made them wait an extra few seconds before singing a full response to their greeting.  The look that says they think I have no manners, and that I was not brought up proper. 

Seriously, do people have nothing better to do than demand the recognition that they were witnessed arriving at work? Your impatience is intrusive and offensive to my sense of politeness.

Now scoot!

telescope + camera = fun

MrT bought a simple telescope a little while back. It is quite work intensive to get focused on anything other than the moon but I am surprised how good the views are when they can be got.

The highlight has been seeing Jupiter with its marbled details as well as three moons. It is however extremely hard to take a photo of.

We did however have enough patience to take this picture tonight with the help of my little camera and MrT's old tripod. (oddly enough the best results with the camera is with it set to Food mode on cold colour offset. Time delays are also essential).

You can just pick out the moons "belly button" in the top left.

a day off of work feels like a guilty pleasure

I have been very busy at work lately. Lately being the past two months. Busy as in working late is the norm. Busy as in I haven't been to RWFL for longer than I want to admit because i have had to start too early most days.

Now I was expecting all the busy-ness to be tidied and submitted and finished by last week (which it wasn't - not my fault).... So Mr-T and I agreed to take today off of work and spend some time getting some wedding planning done and try have some quality time together instead of deciding with arguments are expired.

So today we achieved:

• a kick off visit to our wedding venue's in-house wedding planner
• opening a wedding savings bank account (yes yes this is many months over due)
• preliminary looking for a wedding florist (friends - we are looking for suggestions. we really don't mind spending our money with people you personally know) 
• brunch - well I had breakfast and MrT had lunch so it counts as brunch
• signing my new lease and paying a whole chunk of money as a deposit
• near bankruptcy for the next 10 days (see above)
• a whole afternoon nap

Now I am cruising the internet catching up on blogs and things while MrT chats to his neighbours. We'll be having left over pizza from last night for dinner and mojitos. And the best thing is that we have still another 2 days of not going to work while we enjoy the same two days of weekend as everyone else.

I feel guilty that my work colleagues have to finish the project without me but this taking leave thing feels pretty good and for once it is really great to have a weekend for weekend fun things like reading and eating lunch with friends and seeing family instead of running from shops to event to errand to groceries to house cleaning to sleep to work.

I could get used to this :)

Frankie's new housie

So I finally found a new place to stay. (truth be told this happened about 2 weeks ago). It is in the same complex as some friends of mine and as I had previously admired the total awesomeness of the house they lived in and the pretty gardens and nice location - I totally jumped at it when the letting agent told me the same complex had a unit up for rent.

It is approximately the same size as my current arrangement aside from a smaller second room. However I get a pseudo-personal garden and pretty flowers to look out on on both sides.

The added bonus (which was purely by co-incidence) is that my old varsity buddies happen to be almost right next door (and they have the second cutest little one year old child in the world (see posts circa 13 September) )

There are a few issues such as the apartment isn't brand spanking new and shows the effects of some wear and I will have to actually water the garden myself and living almost next door to your friends means that your friends get to see what your day to day less than tidy more than messy routine is like.

But overall I see a nice potential in this place to settle for a little while. The landlord wants to sell in the end but hopefully this time it will co-ordinate nicely with my pending nuptials or else that MrT and I may decide it will be a nice fit for two :)

I will be moving house later this month so Ill post pictures of Frankie's Castle 2.0 soon enough.

I can only hope this enthusiasm and excitement will see me through the hard work of packing and moving house...

Not so secret

So - everyone who knows me, knows I am not that fond of dogs. "Not so fond" in that MrT faces a very difficult battle ahead to convince us to Ever own a dog as a pet. Not that never owning a pet dog is a foregone conclusion but I have pre-conditions to the types of dogs I will tolerate and these pre-conditions are strict. I am known to go to visit friends and spend most of the visit avoiding the hosts pets.

Anyway - back onto the topic...  wanna hear a secret? I was very tired and grumpy on the way to Brownies yesterday and battling with bad traffic. On way, short cutting across Parkhurst, I saw a guy walking a pug. The pug was trotting along with its head bouncing around and it was So Adorably Cute that I practically fell out of the window of my moving car waving and smiling at the dog and dog walker person. It kinda sorta maybe may have brightened the entire rest of the day.

ugh... I am so embarrassed with my lost convictions.

Kids, listen up, being old is tough

I kinda landed myself in a prime position on a new project at work and by a weird co-incidence it happened to coincide with a financial reward due to how much people here like me. And I felt So-Cool because I was like a key person in the team. And other key people call me and ask me questions that I can answer right away.

Trouble is... when the proposal for the project landed over a month ago - it was "like-yesterday" urgent and it has lost no urgency since then... we are technically 80% complete with the job.

I am struggling after 6 weeks of having to get 12 hours of work out of every 8 hour day. I am exhausted at having to work flat out day in and day out.  Thrilling and exciting and productive and self-important feelings wear off after the first week of early starts and late finishes.

See, when you are a new person starting your career - people only give you little bits of responsibility... after 2 and a half years at this gig - the responsibility comes thick and fast and people stop acting surprised when you do everything they gave you to do and you complete it on time. It's like the normal way of doing things by then.

They took the training wheels off and for the first time ever I feel like this is a Real Persons Career that I am living but right now, I would like to stop having to pedal so hard to stop toppling this bicycle over for a while.

At the same time, the deadline to find a new housie draws very near and the Wedding Stuffs is getting over due and teh pile of unread books stacks up and I feel the desire to bake delicious things and make dinner for MrT. (don't even ask about Run Walk For Life...)

sigh... being all grown up is tough...

Frankie's travels - More west then east bound once more.

We got up very early this morning to continue our travels to the first site of the trip - which was in Port Nolloth. One of the very furthest west points of South Africa.

We passed over several mountains and hills and each new section bought colourful and wild tints of the Northern Cape. monochrome scrubby grass gave way to grey greens and brown pinks of grass which gave way to bright green bushes and clumps of pink and purple tiny flowers and little yellow daisies. All of this interspersed with rocky hillocks and boulder strewn grassy mounds.

The trip felt a little more like tourism for the first three hours (which is basically about how long it took to drive from Pofadder to Port Nolloth) from the beach where I took this shot we drove back up the road to the dirt road leading to the site.

The site was located a little off the beaten track an so we had to walk the final stretch - This was quite fine with me because my rear end was about to fail in all its cushioning duties from sitting so long in the car.

After we completed the task we stopped off for a bite while a member of the party conducted some business and we watched South Africa and Namibia meet on the rugby field.

In due course of things we turned the car back eastwards and drove back to Pofadder to drop the client off at his car where he left it in the morning.

Then we continued eastwards to find the next site to inspect. Unfortunately an incident occurred where (as I don't have straight facts I can't explain the incident) the client for the next spot was unable to take us on a tour of the site. So we decided to go take a look at where we thought the site was according to the maps given. on the way there we were accosted by a rather curious Boer-sized-shaped farmer who was curious why we were making tire tracks up and down his road on his farm. Luckily we were able to explain our presence and he gave us a tour to the exact piece of ground to be seen and some ice cold water to parch our thirst!

By the time we were finished there it was 30 minutes to sunset and we were 250km from our booked beds for the night. My colleague had done most of the driving thus far and asked if I could take over for his eyes were exhausted.

I bravely said yes and adjusted the ix35 to my legs. The ix35 is a splendid car... however, compared to my trusty old Tazz, the brakes are too responsive, the gear stick is too small, first gear is a small wrist flick and the steering is overly sensitive.... compared to a trusty old Tazz. but golly it glides away at a quick speed. 

I was fine when the road were straight and freaked out a little with the brake around the corners.... then it got dark. The N14 does not have street lights. My night eyes tried very hard and with the help of the greatness that is car light brights on a brand new hire car I was doing pretty well (minus the people driving towards me with their brights on) 

Honestly, it was a very scary stressful 250km drive. my eyes were bad, the road was dark and winding and the car was too quick to jump to 120km/h. 

But finally at after 8pm we found ourselves 5 towns away in Kenhardt and driving into the parking lot of the guest house. 

The owner-lady came out and showed us to our rooms and then said the greatest thing....


"Your dinner is almost ready"

Better yet. she then produced braai-ed ribs, wors and chops with potato bake and salad.   

Bliss....

Now, one dinner and a hot shower later I am ready to rest my tired little eyes and be ready to face the third and final day of this Northern Cape road trip :)